Chapter Three
Marinette reached into her purse and pulled out the butterfly miraculous. She stared at it, let its weight press into her palm and convince her of its reality.
"Those walls are an illusion," Adrien announced. His voice sounded distant; her blood was roaring in her ears. "It's Volpina. Nothing she makes is real."
"We need to get home," Marinette said under her breath. She returned the miraculous to her purse, made sure of the peacock as well. There was no reason to, but she checked anyway. "We need to get home now." The fox miraculous, she mouthed to Adrien.
"We're still over a kilometer away." Adrien was frantically trying to position himself in a way that allowed him the best view out the windshield. "And I think there are bigger problems than getting home right now." He tapped his ring out of his bodyguard's line of sight. Then, he said, "I think I can see the wall."
Marinette's mind raced. How, how had Lila Rossi gotten ahold of the fox miraculous? It was in the box when she had opened it earlier than evening, and there was surely no way it had fallen out - and even if it had, how did Lila obtain it? She would have had to be in Marinette's room. She would have had to know who Marinette was!
Her teeth clenched. Of course, someone had discovered her secret identity and snuck into her room to retrieve miraculous power in the past. But he wouldn't have been able to do it if he didn't already have a miraculous and the accompanying kwami to aid him. It was simply unfathomable that Lila, Lila fucking Rossi was wearing the real fox miraculous right now. Truly, Marinette would have sooner believed that the butterfly miraculous had been fished out of her purse, that the girl had been akumatized instead.
She reeled, realizing how long it had been since she and Chat Noir had faced a miraculous threat. Panic surged through her lungs, a momentary fear of being too out of practice, too comfortable in a city that had lapsed quickly right back into normalcy. It was a city that had just as quickly learned to live amidst the ongoing battle between their super-powered peers, and to be used as pawns in that same game. Maybe they had all become too complacent, believing to have outlived their enemy only for a new one to rise in his place. But Marinette wondered, what difference did it make to them? Her fists opened and closed, eager to hold the fox miraculous safe in their grasp. They didn't know how worried they really needed to be.
Adrien's hand clasped hers tightly, and when she glanced at him, he gave her a determined smile. She tried to return the look.
"It'll be fine," he whispered. "We'll take care of it."
Fear was sullying her tenacity. They were far from being unprepared. It may have been nearly two years since they had confronted an akuma, and even longer since that akuma was Volpina, but Ladybug and Chat Noir were wary enough to keep their skills sharp and themselves present. Hawkmoth and Mayura were long gone, disappeared, as far as Paris was concerned, into a cloud of smoke, but the city's heroes were not going to follow them into oblivion. They were still here; they won, or that was what was to be believed.
But Marinette chewed on the inside of her cheek as it occurred to her that all of Paris might consider this another akuma attack. After months and months of absence, Hawkmoth was emerging from the shadows to strike down the victims that had become unsuspecting.
Her heart pounded. She had the urge to jump out of the car, dive into an alleyway and transform to knock those walls back into the nothingness from which they were erected. However coarsely her previous concerns had been laid to rest, a part of her had been enjoying the relief that slowly unwound through her troubled head. And now this, and now Lila.
She had opened her mouth to suggest to the bodyguard that Adrien could walk the rest of the way on foot, make up some lie that her parents were dying to have her home and they had no clue how long the roads would be backed up, when someone, at last, made contact with the walls. Adrien watched them vanish on the phone screen, and Volpina took off as well to cause more trouble elsewhere. No doubt, her goal was to attract Ladybug and Chat Noir's attention, and Marinette imagined her antics would only worsen until they had arrived on the scene.
Her leg bounced as she waited for traffic to move, but with how long the lanes had been backed-up, it felt as though ages were passing. Her mother had time to call, to ask if she was alright, and to hesitantly hang up when Marinette assured her, despite her ruffled tone, that there was nothing to worry about. Beside her, Adrien's phone started buzzing as well, and though Gabriel's steely voice was audible, his words were impossible to make out over the rumble of the motionless car and her own heart beat.
"I don't know, Father," Adrien murmured, and after a pause, "She doesn't know either."
Marinette clung to his arm. She willed traffic to move.
"Don't worry, I'm sure it will be taken care of," Adrien said, glancing at his bodyguard, whose strong brow was lifted in bewilderment in the rearview mirror. "The problem is we're stuck right now."
She brought a fingernail to her mouth to gnaw on. Her eyes squinted against the red lights blazing through the windows, growing stronger as the sky deepened in darkness.
"Don't worry. It'll be fine. We'll - they'll work it out." He blinked rapidly. "Why would you think that?"
"What is he saying?" she whispered.
Adrien was quiet as he listened. She tried to lean closer to the phone, but she still couldn't make out exactly what Gabriel was saying. She recognized Nathalie's name, and she was pretty sure she also heard the name of that new assistant they hired a while ago - she'd only met him a couple times - but everything else escaped her.
Then, her grip on Adrien loosened as he jolted in his seat. "She, what?" he exclaimed. His bodyguard stared at them, alarmed.
"What is it?" Marinette asked him.
"Why would she…?" Adrien trailed off, listening once more, and then, slowly, his face darkened, eyes sharpening. Marinette wondered if she would feel his gaze like a stab through the chest was it turned on her, but luckily, he was fixed on empty space, and all she could sense was a chill zipping through the air into her bones. "How long were you going to wait to tell me that?" he muttered into the phone, voice dangerously calm. As the seconds wore on, his expression grew only more enraged. He sat back in his seat and deflated. Something had struck him. "We'll talk about it later. We have something else to worry about right now."
He hung up without another word, jammed the phone into his pocket, and raked his fingers down the side of his face.
"What?" Marinette asked, voice small enough to hear as no more than a tiny breath.
His eyes darted to the driver's seat. "Not now."
A minute later, there was visible movement ahead of them. The car inched forward. Someone honked in the distance. There was a moment of calm before Marinette was overcome by impatience. "Let's go," she hissed under her breath. The car rolled, it accelerated. She dug her nails into the back of the driver's seat. And then the red lights flashed violently. The car jerked to a stop.
"What now?" she yelled, but right as she spoke, she could see it. The buildings lining the street ahead of them were trembling like an earthquake had broken through the city, but the car remained still, and its occupants even more so as they watched what was unfolding. Drivers and passengers abandoned their cars as rooftops and facades crumbled, hurling towards the ground, towards the street, towards all of them.
It wasn't real. It was an illusion. But that was easy to forget when slabs of brick and wood and steel were raining from above like boulders from a vindictive heaven. Empty vehicles appeared to be crushed, the sounds of grinding metal and shattering glass firing through the night. Those who couldn't manage to escape on time found themselves unharmed, the buildings looming above them still in tact. But it was all happening so fast, and those closest to the supposed danger couldn't make the discernment. The streets were crawling with pedestrians in just a couple moments, all of them seeking safety. A young girl, no older than nine, shouted for Ladybug and Chat Noir as she ran hand-in-hand with her mother right past their car.
They weren't getting anywhere now.
Adrien unfastened both his seatbelt and Marinette's. "Let's just get out of here," he told his bodyguard. "You head back to the house, check on my father and Nathalie. I'm taking Marinette home."
There wasn't time to argue. They all lunged free and took off. Seconds later, a piece of debris smashed through the hood of the car.
"It's fine!" he shouted. "It's fine!"
They burst through the door of a building that appeared to be falling apart - a very small café that had been abandoned when the people inside heard the threatening tremors above them. Tikki and Plagg flew out into the open once the door had slammed behind them.
"What the fuck?" screamed Plagg.
"Volpina?" squealed Tikki
"What does she want?"
"Is she alone?"
"I thought we were done with that pest."
"How did she get the fox miraculous?"
"We'll find out," Marinette said, looking to her partner for reassurance, but he didn't meet her eyes. He glared out the window, fists balled at his sides. "Adrien?"
"Let's do this," he growled, stepping back. He ran a hand through his hair and exclaimed, "Plagg, claws out!"
"Tikki, spots on!"
They launched themselves back outside and took to the sky. They landed on a rooftop above the wreckage, watched as they made contact how a broken chimney repaired itself and a dented truck below them suddenly looked good as new.
"Well, she's got our attention," Chat Noir said, twirling his baton in anticipation. "Where is she?"
"Chat."
He surveyed their area, and finding nothing suspicious, turned his head to regard her stonily.
Gently, she wondered, "What happened on that phone call? Something upset you."
He shook his head and chuckled, lowering his eyes. "Oh man," he grumbled. "I really thought everything was out in the open. I really thought there was nothing left to hide."
Apprehension gripped her. She took his shoulder. "Chat Noir…"
"They were working with her," he spat. His green cat-like eyes flashed with indignation. "They were working with Lila. Of course they were! Why does it make so much sense?"
Ladybug stiffened. "Oh," she said.
"They used her to get people akumatized. They knew she was a shit-stirrer and a liar and they used her." His teeth set in a hard scowl. "But that's not what's making me so upset - they did a ton of stuff they regret, and I've forgiven them for all of it. I'm mad because they never told me."
"Wait - did she know their identities?"
"I…" Chat Noir blinked, his mouth hung a jar for a moment. "I don't know. He didn't say. I-I don't think they would tell her. Not before they would have told me." His voice cracked and he looked away at once, sinking his teeth into his lower lip.
"Chat Noir." She moved her hand to his face, gently running her thumb right beneath his flaming eye. "You have every right to be upset. We'll talk to them later. For now, let's take care of Volpina."
"No problem," he said gruffly, ready to follow her lead.
Before either of them could move, all of the wreckage beneath them disappeared. Gaping holes in walls were sealed. Shards of glass scattered across the pavement like snow was swept up and blown back together into the windows of cars, which sat unharmed in the crowded street below them. A few civilians had been wandering about the disarray, unsure of what to do, and now that everything had been fixed, they released shouts of surprise and confusion.
"Keep on alert. She can only create one illusion at a time. She could try something new at any moment," Ladybug said, spinning her yo-yo.
Almost nothing remained of sunlight now. Streetlights and illuminated windows shone pale yellow through the darkness. Ladybug could still see quite clearly, but there was no telling what lurked in the shadows.
Chat Noir spoke once more, close to her ear. "We should approach my house."
"Your house? Why?"
"On the phone my father told me that he and Nathalie feared Volpina might seek them out."
"If that were true, why would she have bothered with those walls?" said Ladybug. "Her goal was to draw us out."
"Lila asked about them earlier today," he answered. "She approached Alain outside headquarters. I don't know what she asked about, but they're worried for a reason." He spoke dejectedly; every detail in his face seemed to hang lower than unusual.
Ladybug ran her fingers between his ears. She'd have preferred to check on her own apartment and ascertain the status of the miracle box, but her heart ached for her partner, and she acquiesced."We'll start making our way there, then. Hopefully we run into her before we get too close."
They bounded back the way they came, stopping only briefly to help disoriented citizens find the car they had left behind, or ask them if they had seen anything unusual since everything had reverted back to normal. In the night, every figure moving at the corner of Ladybug's eye could have been Volpina, but lamp light revealed their innocence as soon as she jerked her head to look. Even in motion, she felt as though she was being watched, that a shadow lingered at the corner of her vision, and she couldn't blink it away.
"Do you feel that?" she wondered. "Is it just me?"
Chat Noir was staring over his shoulder. "No, it's not. Something weird is going on."
They stopped a block from the house. From their vantage point crouched on a high stone wall enclosing the yard of a nearby manor, they could see the bodyguard as he arrived. The gates opened for him and promptly slammed shut. They could not see who it was the opened the door for him from their angle, but Ladybug thought, as she glanced at her partner, that maybe that was best if they kept out of view. Just looking at the house, he seemed melancholy.
"Nothing out of the ordinary. Yet," he muttered.
"Not anywhere, it seems."
"I figured she'd have shown herself again by now."
Ladybug shivered. There was a stroke of ice down her spine, like a pair of cold eyes had raked themselves down her body. She drew herself nearer to Chat Noir. "I feel like she's here."
He combed his eyes across the street, and then through the yard. An eye twitched. "There's nothing."
"It's been minutes. What is she waiting for?"
A faint breeze ruffled the ends of their hair. One of her ribbons teased his cheek.
"I don't know."
And then, a dark voice startled them both to their feet. "Looking for someone?"
Before Ladybug could register its sound, she expected to turn around and be face to face with Volpina, staring into her smug green eyes while she whirled her instrument about her fingers and grinned with cruel satisfaction. But when her vision settled on the person behind them, her blood went cold to find that it wasn't Volpina at all, but a total stranger. Just a few paces over their shoulders loomed a man, about as tall as Chat Noir beside her (who in the last couple years, had grown nearly to Nathalie's height). Narrow lips were pressed together in a reproachful frown that failed to meet the man's emotionless eyes, which, to Ladybug's unease, were shiny and black like those of a bird. They glared at the heroes from behind a mask that covered all but the lower quarter of his face. A thick leather vest and wide-legged pants composed his outfit, but most unusual were the great black wings that took the place of his arms, dangling towards the stone surface of the wall as he stood with them calmly at his sides.
Ladybug gawked. This man looked like a miraculous user, but whatever miraculous he wore was certainly no miraculous she had ever seen before.
"Who are you?" demanded Chat Noir, recovering from his shock to lift his baton threateningly. With his free hand, he grabbed Ladybug's shoulder and walked them both back several steps, but the stranger only made his way forward, though never so much as to drift any closer to them than he was when they first turned around. They hadn't even heard him.
"A friend," replied the man. One of his wings touched the ground, but his feathers didn't bend. They clicked mechanically and kept their shape. Ladybug realized that they weren't feathers at all, but blades. Hundreds of black blades arranged to look like the wings of some great bird, or some dark angel. "That is," he went on, "if you were so kindly to help me."
"Help you?" Ladybug echoed. She whirled her yo-yo before herself.
"I'm in need of some tools." Lightweight black boots ticked against the stone. Chat Noir halted right behind her as their ceased to be any more wall to walk upon. The stranger paused as well. He turned over his wing, revealing the underside of human arms and hands tucked beneath the wings. He held up his right hand and flicked the ring finger. On his wrist was a black chain bracelet. Ladybug widened her eyes. A miraculous, she thought, it must be. But not one from my box! Then the stranger tapped the side of his head, where his mask covered his ear.
"No," snarled Chat Noir. "You're not getting our miraculous."
Ladybug recoiled as the stranger disappeared, blinked away like a dream behind the eyelids, and then, a moment later, he materialized once more, his face a mere inch from Chat Noir's. Her partner yelped and nearly toppled off the wall.
"I know you two must enjoy not having any supervillains to worry about," he rumbled, his voice rising like a roar of thunder out of his throat. "Which is why I am willing to be patient enough to negotiate this peaceably. Why fight an ongoing war that can be ended before it begins?" There was something familiar about his inflection, but Ladybug couldn't name what it was. She remained sturdy. She glared with venom.
"Nothing?" asked the stranger, looking between them. His eyes were so black that their movement was hardly visible. His mask protruded out from his nose and came to a point, like a fine black beak.
"Where…" Her gaze flicked to his wrist. "Where did you get that miraculous?"
He inspected his bracelet. "This? Well, shouldn't you know? I think it would pair well with that ring on your cat's hand, there. And with your earrings." His lips twisted into a smile. "Would you like to see what it can do? Try to take it."
Ladybug didn't budge, but Chat Noir's hand released her shoulder and lashed through the air with such speed that it should have caught the man's wrist - but he was gone. Again. And then, he was far across the wall. The blades on his wings fanned out like real feathers. In the distance, he was a spot of living shadow.
"What-?" Chat Noir exclaimed, fist clenched over empty air.
The stranger cocked his head. "Enjoy that? There's more."
They watched as he, quite literally, vanished into a cloud of smoke, the mass that had formed his body dissipating into blackness, like ocean mist crashing against the shore. They ran forward, taking stance halfway down the wall, back to back as they waited for him to return.
"Who is he? What is he?"
"I don't know. I've never heard of that miraculous. I know there's more than the nineteen, but-"
"I thought the rest were destroyed!"
"They were all restored. But they should be in Tibet!"
"What the hell is it doing here, then?"
Chat Noir flinched against her spine, and she turned to watch him hurl his baton at the stranger, who had reformed just ahead of him. He blinked away once again, and reappeared just as quickly in the same spot. The baton soared.
And then, right at the edge of the wall, it was caught.
The newcomer walked right through him, shrewd olive eyes bright with the glitter of mischief. She tossed the baton from hand to hand, sizing up the heroes now bristling at her appearance. Behind her, the stranger re-materialized, grinning.
"Thanks for pinning them down for me, Conspiracy," Volpina said. "I'm sure you three have had the time to get to know each other."
"What the hell is your game, Lila?" Chat Noir demanded. Ladybug could practically feel the wrath emanating from her partner, like heat from a flame.
"I know it's been a while, but to refresh your memory, it's Volpina to you," she responded.
Ladybug couldn't tear her eyes away from the pendant dangling from her enemy's throat. The fox miraculous. The real fox miraculous. "I won't even dignify you by calling you by that name," she snapped.
"What happened to the kind and compassionate Ladybug Paris knows so well?" asked Volpina. "I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, considering how brutishly you chewed me out the first time we met. A shame, we could have been such great friends." She tossed Chat Noir's baton over her shoulder, and it clattered against the ground somewhere in the distance. She pulled the flute out from beneath her arm. "Anyway…"
"Whatever it is you're trying to do, you can't get away with it. We know who you are," Ladybug shouted.
"So you do. I suppose you can also prove this isn't Hawkmoth's doing?"
She tensed. Chat Noir's aggressive stance softened as the challenge hit him like a blow to the chest. His face paled.
"You don't know what happened to him, either." It wasn't a question. Volpina's gaze had darkened and she tapped her fingers against her flute. "Guess you're my problem, now. Mine and Conspiracy's."
The man above her shoulder scowled.
"Like his powers? I didn't even know there was a raven miraculous. You kept that one hidden from us."
Raven? Ladybug shook her head. She rotated her yo-yo and stepped forward. "Back down. Now. Or you'll regret it."
"Sure I will." Volpina brought the flute to her lips, and its fluttery music rang out. Ladybug tossed her yo-yo, intending to latch it over the weapon, but Volpina leaped into the air, and it passed right through Conspiracy instead, who glitched and reappeared in the yard.
The yo-yo returned to Ladybug's grasp just as Volpina hurled her illusion in their direction. She expected a flock of screeching birds or a duplicate of herself and Chat Noir, but then -
A bright light exploded and Ladybug's vision went white.
She could feel Chat Noir grappling for her, his gloved fingers pressing into her back and her arms. Ladybug crouched, feeling for the stone surface beneath her as she tried to blink the light out of her eyes. It's not real, she told herself, you're not blind. You're not blind.
And then, a hand brushed dangerously close to her earring. A pinch at her earlobe made Ladybug shout, and she knocked the hand away. She sprung backwards, colliding with Chat Noir, and the two of them plummeted off the side of the wall.
Her vision started to return once they had landed in the grass in a heap. Spots of darkness flitted through the air as she struggled to regain her sensibilities in full. Chat Noir lifted her to her feet. She could make out the green of his eyes, and then the rest of his face.
"Chat Noir-"
Suddenly, he tossed her back to the ground. Volpina launched herself in their direction, grabbing Chat by the arms and bringing him with her as they rolled sharply for the earth. He grunted as she pinned him in the grass. Ladybug's yo-yo wrapped itself around her waist and yanked her back, but Volpina wouldn't release him. She fell on her back against the wall, her arms shaking as she tried to keep Chat Noir's wrists in her grip. Ladybug pulled at her waist again, earning a frustrated scream from the girl, but she dug her feet into the grass and wouldn't move any closer.
Conspiracy flashed into a view a mere few inches from her side. Ladybug gasped and fumbled her string in surprise. He lifted one of his great wings and swung it at her head, narrowly missing as she leaped out of the way, firing herself over the other side of the wall and into the street.
Those wings certainly didn't move like they were made of metal. Ladybug was gripped with horror when she thought of what one of those blades was capable of if they had made contact. Slit her throat? Decapitate her? Her stomach turned. What kind of weapon was that? Blood ran like ice-water through her veins as he sailed over the wall and landed with grace in front of her. He was elegant. He was weightless. He was like every other miraculous user, yet somehow, she had never been more afraid of one.
"Where did you get that miraculous?" she demanded, cursing how her voice trembled. "I want answers this time!"
Conspiracy's eyes narrowed into slits of black ink. He charged at her, and every dodge of those wings sent a stab of terror into her chest. She couldn't get far enough away to call on her Lucky Charm, not while he could simply reappear at her side every time she tried to put distance between them. And how was she to get ahold of his bracelet if it was hidden by a shield of blades?
Ladybug kicked her leg through the air, and Conspiracy passed around every blow, moving with ease even she envied. Whoever was behind that mask, he seemed to have experience. Years of it.
She struggled to keep up with him. This was nothing like training with Chat Noir, who she begged to attack more viciously. Nine times out of ten, she had bested him within a couple minutes, because he could never bear to land a decisive strike. Fighting Chat was easy, fighting Chat was barely exercise - her thoughts wandered to him for a minute as she worried how he fared against Volpina on the other side of that wall in that poor family's front yard, which she would never have the chance to repair if she couldn't find the opening to shout her magic command - fighting Chat Noir hadn't prepared her for this. She feared it hadn't. She could never get the best of Hawkmoth, only outside intervention managed to save them from defeat. As for Mayura, Ladybug considered the woman's failing health the only reason she hadn't literally killed them. Two Aprils ago, she had her head bashed into a window and a rock nearly miss her frontal lobe.
They'd been lucky with their former enemies. Ladybug hoped her fortune hadn't run dry now. She threw punch after punch, all of which Conspiracy dodged, whether because he ducked away or evaporated into smoke. His hand appeared suddenly an inch from her ear, and she dropped, slipping under his legs and rising quickly to her feet, her yo-yo clutched so tightly in her hand that her fingers ached.
She heard shouts. Volpina and Chat Noir in the yard. A flash of light as she created an illusion, another as it was dispelled a moment later. Conspiracy spun to face her, his upper lip peeled back to reveal straight white teeth.
"Finished yet?" she asked him, trying to tame her panting breath.
He blinked, then was gone.
Ladybug looked around her shoulders to see nothing but empty space. Her fingers pinched her earlobes, protecting her miraculous from the hands that might reach out of nothing to take them. Her eyes darted across her surroundings. She searched for any strange shadow, any movement in the dark or fault in the light.
He was gone half a minute before she glanced at her yo-yo, and taking one last look around her, launched it towards the stars.
"Lucky Charm - ah!" she yelped as his wing clipped dangerously close to the string of her yo-yo. She yanked it back into her grasp just as the newly-formed object materialized in the sky. She sprung back on her hands, then rushed forward again, trying to grab the lucky charm before it hit the ground, but it bounced in her palms and then tumbled onto the asphalt.
Glass shattered into a dozen jagged pieces. It had been a hand-mirror, and it was useless to her now.
He lunged for her, seeming to leap out of a fold from space, and he had come so close to raking one of his feathers down her side that the only way to get away from him was to fall. Conspiracy descended. With a resounding crash, his wings clawed into the asphalt, effectively trapping Ladybug beneath him. She froze.
Their bodies didn't touch. There was a fair bit of space between them thanks to the impressive span of his wings, but the feathers spread out in such a way that there was no gap wide enough to escape out of.
"Shh," Conspiracy hissed. His wings enveloped her view of her surroundings. All she could see was metal and his face, his dark, frigid face. Then, the textures of his wings, his outfit, and his face softened into smooth shadow. Ladybug held her breath as she watched him disappear into his own body, until nothing but blackness caged her, like she had closed her eyes to be greeted by the emptiness behind her eyelids. She could barely see his eyes, just the smallest glint of pale light reflected within their soulless depths. This was a dream, a nightmare that she couldn't wake from. He spoke again, though his lips, wherever they were, didn't move. "No one can see us now."
"Get off me," she murmured.
"Don't move." There was the scrape of a metal feather against the ground and an ache in her teeth. "Hand over your earrings, and I'll let you up."
First, she felt the subtle tremor of the ground against her spine, dull enough to ignore if not the distant roar swelling in her ears a moment later. She turned her head. Tiny gaps between his blacked-out feathers revealed the world beyond his cover. She could see how the road sloped out of view just past the next couple buildings, and the first glimpse she got of change came in the form of headlights rising from below, two shining lights as pale as the faintly yellow moon setting in the west as the night deepened. Ladybug gasped. She looked back, searched for Conspiracy's eyes.
"I can wait," he said. "It's no problem of mine. But you might want to consider the price of your survival."
Ladybug wanted to spit in his face, wherever it was, but fear paralyzed her. She stared wordlessly.
"What will it be? I remind you, we're invisible. And time is fast running out."
She could hear the car coming. Loud and only louder.
She hardly recognized Chat Noir's "Cataclysm!" beyond the wall.
Hardly recognized the crash of crumbling stone.
Yet the car still came. Her panicked breathing eased for a second, and she thought, How strange…
"Well?" barked Conspiracy, impatience slipping into his tone.
She blinked at him and looked for the car. It was awfully close now. Loose pebbles quivered madly.
The mirror's shards reflected the headlights and beamed like broken stars.
Of course. She smiled.
Right as the car ran over the glass, Ladybug heard the pop of a tire, and merely meters from where they laid on the street, the blinding headlights died. The car vanished into the air, leaving nothing in its stead but an empty road and the ruined lucky charm, which hadn't been ruined at all.
Conspiracy growled in rage at the failure of the illusion. His shadowy form lifted away, the wings dislodging from the ground with a heave of effort. Like a thick plume of smoke he took to the sky and rematerialized on what was left of the wall. Ladybug jumped to her feet, spotting her partner, who had retrieved his baton, locked in a close fight with Volpina amongst the wreckage. She threw the yo-yo, wrapping it around Volpina's calf and yanking her onto her stomach. She screeched furiously.
Chat Noir bent down to reach for the necklace, but Volpina swung her flute and struck him in the nose.
"Give it up, Volpina!" Conspiracy shouted. "Another day."
She panted, trying to free herself from the string with feverish desperation. Ladybug was gaining.
Another tune blown into the flute created a second disorienting flash of light.
By the time their vision had cleared again, both Volpina and Conspiracy were gone.
"Where did they go?" hollered Chat Noir, swinging his head from side to side.
"We'll see them again," Ladybug told him. After tossing the handle of the broken mirror into the air and sending her ladybugs around the scene of the fight, she slipped her hand into tried to give him an encouraging smile, but she was all too shaken from the encounter.
"I sure hope we don't," spat Chat Noir hotly. His cheeks were flushed, his breath labored.
"I didn't know," she whispered, "how much anger you harbor towards Lila."
He looked surprised, and then ashamed, his eyes drifting away from her. "I…" Cat-like pupils narrowed to thin black scars in pools of emerald. "I can't make excuses for her. I can't understand her malevolence. She hurts people for no reason and expects them to take it. It's a sick joke - Lila and my family?" He inhaled sharply and turned his head in the direction of his house. "I need to go check on them."
Ladybug touched his face. "Text me when you see they're safe." She spun her yo-yo. "I need to go check on the miracle box. It - it's probably gone."
"What does it mean if it is? Does Lila know your identity?" he asked.
"She can't possibly," Ladybug breathed. It was all still too strange. She wasted no more time. She waved at Chat Noir and swung through the night in the direction of the patisserie. As Marinette, she burst through the door of her apartment, beared the hugs of her worried parents, and wrenched herself free as soon as possible to rush up the stairs. Her heart raced. Tikki groaned nervously right by her ear.
Marinette practically flew into her room. Tikki hit the light as she ran to the table where she kept the gramophone, which, to her amazement, still sat among the family photos, and her helmet was there as well, apparently unmoved.
She dropped it onto the floor and clicked the proper buttons, holding her breath as the lid of the contraption slid open.
Tikki sunk into Marinette's lap, a weary sigh escaping her.
Her phone started buzzing. Marinette fished it out of her purse, along with the butterfly and the peacock miraculous. Adrien was calling her. She stared at the screen, stared at his image, his smiling face and gentle eyes, and herself beside him, their faces pressed together. Happy.
Eventually, her phone went quiet. A moment later, she received a text letting her know that his family was safe.
Numbly, Marinette stared at the butterfly and peacock miraculous in her palm. Their jewels glinted cooly in the lamplight. She had nowhere to put them.
The box was gone.